Donald Glover’s “Lando” Series Will be a Movie Instead
We were enthused when we heard Donald Glover would be hopping back in the Millennium Falcon as Lando Calrissian. The news broke in late July that Donald and his brother Stephen Glover were penning a new script based on the former’s turn as the young Lando Calrissian in 2018’s Star Wars spinoff Solo: A Star Wars Story. The notion was that the Glovers were going to create a new series about Lando’s adventures as a young man for Disney+. Now, The Hollywood Reporter confirms that the project will be a feature film instead.
Stephen Glover appeared on the Pablo Torres Finds Out podcast, posted yesterday, revealing that the current plans are to make a movie for Lucasfilm. These plans are currently frozen in carbonite due to the dual writer and actors strike, but one hopes that they’ll finish the script once the strike is—fingers crossed—resolved sooner than later.
Previously, Disney announced that a Lando series was in the works in December of 2020, with Haunted Mansion and Dear White People director Justin Simien attached to develop it. Simien exited before the Glover brothers took on the script, and as they worked on it, the TV series became a feature film.
As we wrote previously when the initial story of the Glovers’ involvement was revealed, Donald Glover’s portrayal of the young Lando Calrissian, played by Billy Dee Williams in the original Star Wars trilogy, as well as 2019’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, was the rare case of a performer sliding perfectly into a role made iconic by somebody else before. He has the charisma and sense of mischief that made Billy Dee Williams a breath of fresh air when he made his first appearance as Han Solo’s brother-in-smuggling in The Empire Strikes Back.
Glover had this to say back in April to GQ: “I’m not interested in doing anything that is going to be a waste of my time or just a paycheck. I would much rather spend time with people I enjoy. It just has to be the right thing, which I think it could be. Lando is definitely somebody I’d like to hang out with. We’re talking about it. That’s as much as I can say.”
When Donald Glover met Williams before filming on Solo began, he told THR the charming story of what happens when exuberance meets cool:
“I was like, ‘I’ve always felt like this character could do this, and he represents this, and I kind of feel like he comes from here, and it’s very obvious he has a lot of taste, so maybe he grew up seeing that from afar? Because I’m like that. Maybe he saw it from other planets and was like, ‘I want to be that. He just let me ramble on and on, and then finally I was like, ‘So, what do you think?’ And he goes, ‘Yeah, I don’t know about all that. Just be charming.’“
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Featured image: Donald Glover is Lando Calrissian in SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY. Courtesy Walt Disney Studios/Lucasfilm
